


keith wants to see a cryptid and the team has some fun

by HyperchaoticStarlight (MVPYurio)



Series: waiting on the world to end [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Keith (Voltron), Autistic Pidge | Katie Holt, Cryptids, Everyone Is Gay, Family, Gen, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Silly, Space Uncle Coran (Voltron), Swearing, Telekinetic Keith, babadook, season 4? whomst?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 00:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12377556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MVPYurio/pseuds/HyperchaoticStarlight
Summary: Keith really wants to see the Babadook.





	keith wants to see a cryptid and the team has some fun

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so apparently now there's Disk Horse™ around Matt's age as well, which really makes no damn sense seeing as no reasonable organization would send a teenager to Kerberos, but yanno what, Voltron makes no damn sense.
> 
> That being said, I'm not changing anything about this series. Matt and Shiro became a thing back in the first installment, and I'm keeping it that way. Fight me.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise to anyone that Keith and Pidge were  _ way  _ too into their conspiracy theories. And it wasn’t a bad thing, either. After all, if not for their special interests, they never would have found the Blue Lion and Voltron would never have re-formed.

That being said, it sure as  _ hell  _ was funny watching them geek out over conspiracies and whatever the quiznak a “cryptid” was. And now that Matt was with them, it was even more ridiculous.

“It’s a… well… Keith, how do you describe a cryptid?”

“Well… um… okay, so… it’s just a  _ cryptid,  _ okay? There’s no other way to describe it.”

“Like, Nessie is a cryptid.”

Lance stared at them blankly. “What’s a Nessie?”

Pidge almost burst into tears.

But for some reason, when June rolled around according to Pidge’s calendar, she, Keith, and Matt wouldn’t stop talking about one  _ particular  _ cryptid.

“Okay, go from the beginning again. Why is this Baba dude so special?”

“Hunk, stop encouraging them,” Lance whined.

“So it’s June,” Pidge started.

“Yeah.”

“And June is Pride Month. Y’know, when we gays get to come out and be sparkly.”

“Sounds like my kind of month,” said Lance, somehow managing to wink at Keith and Hunk simultaneously despite their being on opposite sides of him.

“Lance, stay focused,” said Keith. “Okay, so there’s this one cryptid—”

“—I finally figured out a way to describe it,” said Pidge. “Cryptids are people or animals who may or may not exist and we don’t really know.”

“What, like you?” Lance asked. “Can tiny gremlins be cryptids?”

“Hey! I exist!” Pidge poked her tongue out at Lance. “And I am  _ not  _ a gremlin.”

“You are tiny, though,” Matt mused. Pidge stomped on his foot. “Owwww…”

_ “Anyway,”  _ Pidge continued, “there’s this one guy called the Babadook. He’s from an Australian horror movie, so technically he’s fictional, but in the movie he’s basically a cryptid, so that counts, and the queer community has basically adopted him as a gay icon. I still don’t quite get why that is. But anyway, it’s Pride Month, which means that the Babadook can roam free and be his wonderful gay self!”

“Pidge is working on a program to see if there’s any Babadook-like activity in this universe and whether it’s at all possible for us to find him,” said Keith. “It took a lot of convincing—”

“—The Babadook was  _ not  _ at the top of our cryptids priority list; the only reason I’m helping you with this is so you shut up about Mothman—”

“—Mothman is fantastic. Anyway, Pidge—”

“—Mothman is such a mainstream cryptid—”

“—HOW DARE YOU—”

“—I’m working on a program—”

“—INSULT MOTHMAN—”

“—That will look for traces of Babadook-like activity—”

“—IN SUCH A BRAZEN FASHION—”

“—in this universe so that  _ maybe  _ we can find him. Oh come on, Keith, stop pouting.”

“Mothman is awesome,” Keith muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.

Lance walked over and wrapped his arms around Keith, nuzzling him. “Don’t worry, babe. I believe you. I mean, I still don’t necessarily believe he exists, but if he does, I’m sure he’s just as awesome as you are.”

Keith beamed and rested his head on Lance’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he said.

Lance looked over at Hunk. “Oi, get over here; we’re group hugging.”

“Guys, you don’t have to—” but Keith was cut off by Hunk somehow having snuck up behind him and hugging him tightly. “Oh… okay.”

~~~~

Shiro blinked multiple times. “Okay, say all of that again.”

“Okay, okay, so basically, Keith and Pidge won’t shut up about this thing called the Babadook, it’s some monster or something that they’re trying to find, and Pidge put together this program to try and find it.”

“The Babadook?”

“Sounds familiar,” Coran mused. “I’ve heard that name before… wait, no, I’m thinking of Mardooks.”

“Oooh, you don’t want to run into those,” said Allura. “Not exactly the friendliest.”

Shiro nodded slowly. “Okay, and you want to…”

“We want to pull one on Pidge and Keith by having someone dress up as the Babadook, go onto some other planet, trip Pidge’s program and then have us all go over there. Matt’s already in on it.”

“Oh, please,” said Shiro. “Pidge will see through that in five doboshes.”

“Yeah, but Keith won’t,” said Lance. “It’ll be  _ hysterical.  _ Not to mention, it’ll be hysterical watching Pidge try to hold it together as she realizes we’re messing with them and Keith doesn’t.”

“Come to think of it, that  _ would  _ be funny,” said Allura. “But how would we set off Pidge’s program? We don’t know how it works?”

“Oh, don’t worry, we will soon,” Hunk said sagely. “There’s an easy way to find out how her program works.”

“What’s that?”

“Ask her.”

~~~~

“You want to know how the program works?! Hunk, I didn’t think you cared about cryptids!”

“Well, you and Keith and your brother are so interested in them…”

“Okay, so basically, after watching the movie a whole bunch of times and analyzing various components of every Babadook appearance, we realized that it’s very likely that the Babadook has a specific energy signature which emits sound at a frequency that’s way,  _ way  _ too low for anyone to hear. Something around ten Hertz or so.”

“Holy quiznak, that’s low,” said Hunk. “Isn’t the lowest we can possibly hear like twenty or something?”

“Yep. Some whales can hear about seven Hertz, but that’s only in water. There’s certainly no land-based being, which the Babadook is, which can hear that low, and certainly no one who can emit a frequency that low. So what I did is set up a super high-powered frequency detector, basically the Blue Lion’s sonic scanner but about five hundred times stronger—don’t worry; it won’t fry anyone’s brains—and for the next ten quintants I’m going to have it running across the universe, and if I can pick up anything sentient emitting sound at ten Hertz, well, then we might have something.”

“That’s brilliant!” said Hunk. “Oh, I hope you don’t mind that I’m taking notes…”

“Do I  _ mind?!?!  _ I’m just glad someone is so interested in what I’m doing here!!!” Pidge began flapping her hands in excitement. “Take all the notes you like. Maybe you can help me with it!”

“Yeah,” said Hunk, grinning to himself. “I’m sure I can help you find this guy.”

~~~~

“GUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUYS!!!”

Pidge and Keith came flying into the main room, Keith waving something in the air.

“What is it?” Shiro asked.

“Our scanner picked up on something! We may be able to find the Babadook!” Keith bounced up and down on his feet. “I have coordinates right here!”

“I’m still not quite sure,” said Pidge. “It seems a little too perfect. A signal of  _ exactly  _ ten Hertz, at a planet reasonably within range from the Castle.”

“Well, it is Pride Month back on Earth. Gay magic is in the air and maybe it just… transferred over to us?”

Pidge shrugged. “Eh, it’s worth a shot. And then we can be done with this Babadook business once and for all.”

“Hold on,” said Shiro. “Nobody ever said you could go.”

The light left from Keith’s eyes in about half a tick. “Shiro… Shiro, this could be our _only_ _chance_ to meet a _gay icon._ We _have_ to go.”

“I dunno,” said Shiro. “We do have to think about how we’re going to defeat the Galra…”

“Oh, just let them,” said Allura, right on cue. “They’ve earned the right to have a bit of fun.”

“And technically, you’re not in charge anymore,” said Matt. “Keith is.”

“Matt, you’re supposed to be on my side.”

“Pidge is my sister.”

“Fair enough. Okay, fine, we can go to see the Babadook.”

Keith punched the air. Pidge looked around the room.

“Hold on,” she said. “Where’s Coran?”

“In bed,” said Allura. “Got another case of the Slipperies.”

_ “I do not have the Slipperies!”  _ Coran’s voice called, from the echo cube that had been placed in his bedroom and that Lance had just set off using a button in his pocket.

In reality, he was standing alone on an alien planet in a Babadook costume that Hunk had spent multiple nights making.

“Aww, that stinks,” said Pidge.

“Well, no time to waste!” said Keith. “We gotta go!”

~~~~

As predicted, Pidge figured it out in minutes, but one quick look from Matt and a conspiratorial grin from Lance got her to be quiet.

“This is amazing,” Keith whispered, staring at Coran as he scampered around the planet in his Babadook costume. “A real live cryptid.”

And then suddenly Coran tripped and fell and, on reflex, shouted “Oh, quiznak!”

Keith blinked a few times. “Was that… was that Coran’s voice?”

“What?” Lance asked innocently.

“That was Coran’s voice. When he tripped. He said ‘oh quiznak’ and it sounded like Coran.” Keith crossed his arms. “Did you  _ trick  _ me?”

The others all stared at each other. They’d been caught.

“Okay, okay, maybe just a little,” Lance admitted.

“You guys,” Keith whined. “I was so excited to see a gay icon!”

“In fairness, Coran is a gay icon,” Lance pointed out.

Keith sighed quietly. “Yeah. Yeah, he is.”

“Shit, babe, did I upset you?”

“I dunno… I mean, I’m not  _ upset,  _ but… that wasn’t very nice of you.”

“No, it wasn’t. I’m sorry, Keith.”

“It’s okay. It’s pretty funny, now that I think about it. How did you get the costume?”

“I made it,” Hunk said proudly.

“Shit, that’s impressive.”

“Out of a spacesuit. That mask is a helmet.”

“That’s  _ really _ impressive. Okay, okay, I’m not really mad. That’s a hell of a lot of effort to put into one stupid prank and I can’t say I don’t respect that.”

Lance leaned over, smiling, and slung an arm around Keith. “Glad you don’t hate us for this.”

“I could never hate you. That being said…” He caused a rock to fly up and then released it, allowing it to freefall and bonk Lance on the head. “You’re still an asshole.”

“I sure am. But you love me.”

“I do,” Keith sighed. “C’mon, you piece of shit. Let’s go back to the Castle.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @sing-a-rebel-song or as Mod Keith @everything-quiznaks-so-much.


End file.
